Helming, Katherine C., Wang, Xiaofeng, Wilson, Boris G., Vazquez, Francisca, Haswell, Jeffrey R., Manchester, Haley E., Kim, Youngha, Kryukov, Gregory V., Ghandi, Mahmoud, Aguirre, Andrew J., Jagani, Zainab, Wang, Zhong, Garraway, Levi A., Hahn, William C., and Roberts, Charles W. M.
Recent studies have revealed that ARID1A, encoding AT-rich interactive domain 1A (SWI-like), is frequently mutated across a variety of human cancers and also has bona fide tumor suppressor properties. Consequently, identification of vulnerabilities conferred by ARID1A mutation would have major relevance for human cancer. Here, using a broad screening approach, we identify ARID1B, an ARID1A homolog whose gene product is mutually exclusive with ARID1A in SWI/SNF complexes, as the number 1 gene preferentially required for the survival of ARID1A-mutant cancer cell lines. We show that loss of ARID1B in ARID1A-deficient backgrounds destabilizes SWI/SNF and impairs proliferation in both cancer cells and primary cells. We also find that ARID1A and ARID1B are frequently co-mutated in cancer but that ARID1A-deficient cancers retain at least one functional ARID1B allele. These results suggest that loss of ARID1A and ARID1B alleles cooperatively promotes cancer formation but also results in a unique functional dependence. The results further identify ARID1B as a potential therapeutic target for ARID1A-mutant cancers., To search for specific vulnerabilities created by ARID1A mutation, we used data from Project Achilles, a large-scale project focused on identifying essential genes in a wide panel of cancer cell [...]